1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a system and methods for creating and sharing an event using a social network. In particular, the system and methods hereof uses artificial reality to provide visual information to a user of the social network.
2. Description of the Related Art
U.S. Pat. No. 7,855,638 and U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 11/624,998; 11/875,414; 12/111688; and 12/146,907 relate generally to viewing people, places, and events, such as sporting events, using positioning and artificial reality to improve the event viewing experience. (All patents and publications cited herein are incorporated by reference.) While a plan view of a map is useful for event planning, such views can be confusing and typically have limited functions to interact with the event.
Commercial applications of augmented reality exist such as Layar, Wikitude, Junaio, Sekai Camera and others which use augmented reality to aid finding information about points of interest. See, e.g., www.layar.com, www.wikitude.org/en/, and www.junaio.com.
Social networks are well known, and examples include LinkedIn.com, Google+ or Facebook.com and various social utilities to support social networking. Growing a social network can mean that a person needs to discover like-minded or compatible people who have similar interests or experiences to him or her. Identifying like-minded people, however, often requires a substantial amount of and time and effort because identifying new persons with common interests for friendships is difficult. For example, when two strangers meet, it may take a long and awkward conversation to discover their common interests or experiences.
Social networks, in general, track and enable connections between members (including people, businesses, and other entities). In particular, social networking websites allow members to communicate more efficiently information that is relevant to their friends or other connections in the social network. Social networks typically incorporate a system for maintaining connections among members in the social network and links to content that is likely to be relevant to the members. Social networks also collect and maintain information about the members of the social network. This information may be static, such as geographic location, employer, job type, age, music preferences, interests, and a variety of other attributes, or it may be dynamic, such as tracking a member's actions within the social network.
A typical modern computer-implemented social networking application requires each user to provide some biographical information, and/or identify his or her interests, and in some instances can suggest to the user other users with compatible interests. For example, some web sites such as LinkedIn.com or Facebook.com require participants to register as members. Each member can fill out a profile or provide other personal data such as professional interests, career information, interests in music, books, movies, and even information about political or religious beliefs. Matching algorithms can then use the profile or data provided to match members with members who are deemed compatible by the algorithms, under the assumption, for example, that matching people's interests and values can lead to successful new friendships or relationships within the social network. Some mobile device-based applications for identifying common interests require each user to configure the user's mobile device, including entering the user's interest, such as the things the user wishes to buy or sell, the kind of people the user wishes to meet, etc., before a social networking opportunity can be found for the user.
Typically, when a user who is also a member of a social network wishes to share information with other members of the social network, the user generally uploads or copies and pastes the information to a location on the social network or forwards the information in the form of a message or email to other members. Often, certain forms of information do not copy and paste very well from one medium to another, and additional formatting or modifications to the information may be required before it is suitable for viewing by other members. Therefore, the quality and type of shared information is limited and members may be less likely to share information with each other.
Various attempts have been made at sharing sports related event information. For example, select information can be shared or published with groups as more fully described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,478,078 and U.S. Publication Nos. 2008/0036653; 201110142016; 2010/0070758; 2011/0098928; and 2009/0144392 (incorporated by reference herein). Related applications, including U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 11/875,414 and 11/624,998 describe how locations, interest, social information, are created and published to groups or within defined groups. Groups can be formed based on certain criteria. Groups can be formed ahead of time or be dynamic. Social networking participants can view shared views and AR messages.